chemistry

Reaction video

Reaction video is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Reaction video rather than just read about it. In short: A reaction video, or a react video, is a video in which one or more persons react to something. Videos showing the emotional reactions, criticism or commentary of people viewing movies, television series episodes, film trailers, music videos, news, or other media are numerous and popular on online video hosting services such as YouTube and live-streaming services such as Twitch.

Key takeaways

Reaction video belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Reaction video to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Reaction video from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A reaction video, or a react video, is a video in which one or more persons react to something. Videos showing the emotional reactions, criticism or commentary of people viewing movies, television series episodes, film trailers, music videos, news, or other media are numerous and popular on online video hosting services such as YouTube and live-streaming services such as Twitch. The depicted persons may not even be aware that they are being recorded. In many cases, the video to which people are reacting is shown within the reaction video, letting viewers see what is being reacted to. The question of if, and when, reaction videos constitute a fair use of intellectual property, rather than an appropriation of the reacted-to content, and a copyright infringement, has generated controversy and is a subject of discussion and debate.

History

On television, reaction clips have long been a feature of Japanese variety shows, showing tarento and other celebrities reacting to video clips. An evolution of earlier 1970s Japanese TV quiz shows that featured audience participants responding to questions, Fuji Television's Naruhodo! The World in 1981 introduced a format where a panel of celebrities and comedians watched brief videos and answered questions on the video. This eventually evolved into the "waipu" format, where a "waipu box" superimposed on the corner of the screen shows a celebrity or tarento reacting to a video clip. This reaction format is still widely used in Japanese variety shows, where it is the equivalent of a laugh track on American television shows.

One of the first online viral reaction videos showed a child reacting to the "Scary Maze Game" prank on YouTube in 2006. Beginning in 2007, reaction videos began to proliferate on the Internet. Among their first topics were reactions to the shock video 2 Girls 1 Cup. By 2011, videos of people recording themselves reacting to film trailers had become a staple of services such as YouTube. The numerous reaction videos for particularly popular or shocking television events, such as the 2013 Game of Thrones episode "The Rains of Castamere", have themselves become the subject of commentary. In 2013, the British TV channel Channel 4 converted the reaction video format into a TV show, Gogglebox. In this reality show, families or groups of friends watch and discuss popular television broadcasts of the previous week in their own homes. The format was successful and spawned licensed adaptations in other television markets.

Music reaction videos Music reaction videos involve people filming themselves and their reactions to a song, or a music video for a song, as they listen to it for the first time. Some videos offer a contrast with the listener being outside of the traditional audience for the music. The New York Times noted there is a racial dynamic to many reaction videos which involve younger, Black listeners responding positively to music by older, white musicians. Some YouTube channels doing music reaction videos have become very successful, with major music labels reaching out to channels to promote their artists. When Tim and Fred Williams's reaction video to Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" went viral, it pushed the song to #2 on the iTunes chart.

Reception Commenting on the phenomenon, Sam Anderson described it as encapsulating the "fundamental experience of the Internet" in that it involved watching screens on which people watched screens, in a potentially infinite regression. The first reaction videos for the gross-out 2 Girls 1 Cup allowed people, according to Anderson, to "experience its dangerous thrill without having to encounter it directly—like Perseus looking at Medusa in the reflection of his shield". But much like the later videos featuring reactions to items of popular culture, Anderson wrote, such videos provide the appeal of experiencing, "at a time of increasing cultural difference, the comforting universality of human nature" in showing people of all backgrounds reacting similarly to a shared cultural experience. Witney Seibold derided reaction videos as "graceless" and "narcissistic" because they merely reflect immediate emotional reactions, and doubted that the reactions of a person aware of being filmed could in fact reflect the honest emotional response promised by the format. The neuroscientist Lisa Aziz-Zadeh suggested a role for mirror neurons in allowing us to share the experience of the person we are watching in a video.

Legal status The video to which people react is typically shown within the reaction video, allowing the reaction video's viewers to see what is being reacted to. This has led to controversy regarding the extent and conditions under which reacting to another creator's content falls under the doctrine of fair use in US law. In the case of Bilibili v. Youku (2023), Bilibili was found liable in a copyright infringement lawsuit concerning reaction videos on its platform related to the TV series Word of Honor, and was ordered to compensate Youku 350,000 yuan. The People's Court of Yangpu District, Shanghai, determined that reaction videos did not qualify as fair use and that the creators had not gained proper authorization, leading to an infringement of the rights to information network transmission of the involved work.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Reaction video

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Reaction video claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Reaction video before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Reaction video ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Reaction video

In research: Reaction video appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Reaction video in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Reaction video is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Internet culture, Media sharing, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Reaction video outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Reaction video in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Reaction video means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Reaction video out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Reaction video in simple terms?

Why does Reaction video matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Reaction video?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Reaction video.